Steam not downloading as fast as it should?

[Caliaton]

Hey guys, I've had steam for the longest time, have downloaded over 30 games, and always downloaded games at a rate of anywhere from 1.9 to 2.1 mb per second. But just recently, I discovered on speedtest.net that our download speed is actually 12.75 mb per second! Does anyone know why steam is downloading at a much lower speed than my internet is capable of? Thanks guys in advance for any help you can provide me with

 

[Caliaton]

Nvm all, I just looked on the steam faq's and it seems that steam downloads in BYTES while internet speed is measured in BITS. Just a little confusion on my end but now i understand.

 

[fudoka711]

Wow I am jealous of your internet speed...

 

[randomizer]

Another thing to remember is that Steam isn't necessarily downloading from the server that is closest to you. It also varies which server it will download from.

 

[Hawkeye22]

Steam may also cap downloads so that everyone gets a fair share of downloading. My basic internet service is 20Mb/1Mb and I also only get around 2Mb/s download.

 

[randomizer]

I don't think Steam itself caps speeds, but individual servers will probably throttle speeds though. I top out around 14MB/s. My ISP has their own content mirror which will contribute to higher speeds, but I know that most of my downloaded data doesn't come from my ISP's mirror.